2017 Perfect Game High School Preview Index
The western Philadelphia suburbs had been enjoying such a mild February weather-wise that when Malvern (Pa.) Preparatory School head baseball coach Freddy Hilliard spoke with Perfect Game last week, he was optimistic that his program’s tryouts scheduled for Feb. 24 would be held outdoors.
“That would be the first time that’s happened in a long time,” he told PG, the anticipation evident in his voice.
The arrival of spring-like weather a couple of weeks earlier than normal would fit right into Malvern Prep’s plans as the team members chomp at the bit to get the 2017 season started. The Friars are coming off a somewhat uncharacteristic runner-up finish at the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association (PAISAA) state championship in 2016; they won consecutive titles in 2014-15 and four championships between 2009 and 2015.
The graduation of top 2016s like Sean Flynn (Mount St. Mary’s), Cam Williams (Elon U.), Brett Greeley (Tufts U.) and Jake Mullan leaves a hole in the Friar’s 2017 lineup.
But the return of seniors Shane Muntz (Wake Forest), Jimmy Kingsbury (Villanova), Matt Daller (Rhode Island), William Burgess (Tufts), Jalen Wade (Cincinnati), Nick Li (John Hopkins U.) and Vince Sposato provide ample reason for optimism. Top juniors Billy Corcoran (Pittsburgh), Brady Devereux (Wake Forest) and Chis Newell (Virginia) will also contribute mightily.
“We’re really excited about this group coming back,” said Hilliard, who is beginning his eighth season as head coach after serving as an assistant for five years. “We’re really excited about what we have coming back on the mound for starters; we have a lot of depth and a lot talent there.
“From a positional standpoint, yeah, we graduated a few guys but one of the things we pride ourselves on is making sure we’re developing our kids so that when one class leaves, the next class is ready to go.”
Muntz hit .364 with a team-high six home runs and 29 RBI last season; Daller hit .309 with four homers and 28 RBI; Sposato was at .373 with a home run and 24 RBI. The right-hander Kingsbury finished 10-0 a 0.99 ERA and 50 strikeouts in 42 1/3 innings to lead the pitching staff.
And the makeup of this solid 2017 roster has not gone unnoticed. When the Friars open the regular season in a couple of weeks, they’ll do so as the No. 37-ranked team in the Perfect Game High School Preseason National Top 50 Rankings and as the highest ranked team in the PG HS Northeast Region (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont).
“First of all, we’re always very, very honored anytime we get that kind of recognition,” Hilliard said. “It is humbling to us, for sure, because we know, obviously, there are a lot of very good baseball teams in this country. Anytime we’re in the conversation, we’re very humbled and honored by it.
“But we also understand that preseason rankings are preseason. … At the end of the day you still have to go out there and prove that you are one of the top teams in the country.”
Malvern Prep lost last year’s PAISAA state championship game to arch-rival Haverford (Pa.) School, which, like Malvern, is a member of the Philadelphia-based Inter-Academic League; Haverford scored three runs in the top of the eighth inning to break a scoreless tie and escape with a 3-0 victory.
Like any coaching staff worth its salt would do, Hilliard and his assistants have made the effort to turn the loss in a state title game into a learning experience. They adopted the mantra of “finish” and told their players they need to have the mindset necessary to close-out both individual games and the cumulative season strong.
Hilliard will remind them that the program has either won outright or shared each of the last six Inter-Ac League championships – and 11 since 2001 – and celebrated five PAISAA state championships in 11 years. But he’s also found out he can motivate the young players even more when their egos have been slightly bruised.
“When you’re coming off a loss it’s a lot easier to tell them, ‘Hey, we’ve got a lot of work to do to get back to (the championship game) and this year let’s make sure we’re dog-piling at the end of it and not walking off with our heads down,’” he said. “We’ll use that to motivate our guys; I think they don’t want to feel that feeling again this year.”
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MALVERN IS A PENNSYLVANIA BOROUGH THAT SITS ABOUT 25 MILES west of Philadelphia. The Malvern Prep campus features two all-male schools, a Middle School (grades 6-8) and an Upper School (9-12), and Hilliard said a typical freshman class consists of about 100 students. In most years, a little more than half of those freshmen graduated eighth-grade from Malvern Middle School while the rest come in from other middle schools in the area.
Looking specifically at the baseball program, Hilliard explained that every year he will have a group of seniors who have been at Malvern since sixth grade – they’re called “lifers” – and others who didn’t reach campus until the later grades. When they’re all brought together for the first time, the initial conversation can be far-reaching.
“We try to talk more about what lies ahead,” Hilliard said. “We’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished but at the same time, that’s in the past. I tell our guys that no one’s going to hand you wins; no one’s going to hand you titles based on what kids have done in the past that aren’t even at the school anymore. They’re going to have to carve out their own legacy, and we talk a lot about the legacy they want to leave behind.
“So, we really try to focus on the ‘now’ and making sure our guys understand that, hey, that was last year’s team and this year’s team has its own history to (make),” he continued. “And we always remind them that all that success only makes the bulls-eye on our back get bigger and bigger and bigger.”
Malvern Prep cannot offer athletic scholarships but it can recruit kids and encourage them to come to the school. They arrive for a variety of reasons – the school’s strong academic reputation is cited by most – but Hilliard has noticed quite a few arrive from across the area because they want to play baseball at Malvern Prep.
“A lot of times, that pride is already instilled in them so when they actually become a part of the program, they know a little bit about the history of it,” he said. “That’s part of the reason they chose to come Malvern Prep, is to try to be a part of this baseball program.”
The same can probably be said of the other five college preparatory schools and academies that make up the Inter-Academic League: Episcopal Academy, Germantown Academy, Haverford School, Springside Chestnut Hill Academy and William Penn Charter School. Most of these schools were established more than 150 years ago – before baseball was even invented – and William Penn Charter (est. 1689) even predates the Republic itself by about 100 years.
Malvern Prep shared the Inter-Ac League championship with SCH Academy in 2016, both finishing with 7-3 league records; Malvern finished 29-6 overall. It’s a competitive league year-in and year-out, so much so, in fact, that the 2012 team is the only one of Hilliard’s six championship squads that finished unbeaten (10-0) in league play.
“The Inter-Ac is like college in that every team is going to be good,” the senior Muntz said. “It’s like ACC games – they’re always going to be close. If it’s Miami versus B.C. (Boston College), it doesn’t matter, it’s always going to be close; they find a way to make it close. It’s the same way in our league.”
Muntz is a 6-foot-4, 240-pound catcher/right-handed pitcher, who attended the 2015 PG Junior National Showcase and the 2016 PG National Showcase, and who PG ranks the No. 190 overall prospects in the class of 2017; he joins Daller, Li and Burgess as the 2017 team captains.
“We have a lot of momentum going in (to the season) because we started our workouts a little earlier this year,” Muntz told PG last week. “It’s been the seniors but we also have a lot of underclassmen that are getting really involved, which is good. … We do have a good group of seniors that are pretty much going to lead the way for this team and let everyone else follow.”
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MUNTZ TOLD PG HE CONTINUES TO MARVEL AT THE LONG and rich history the Malvern Prep baseball program has established. He especially enjoys how the program’s alumni will return to campus when they’re finished with their college calendars, and offer encouragement to the players who have filled their shoes and are stilling wearing the Friars’ uniform.
“It’s a really big thing. Everyone appreciates what everyone did (before them) and it’s like a big brotherhood; everyone loves each other, genuinely,” he said.
The foundation the previous players laid down now supports a solid structure that is being recognized nationally even beyond Perfect Game’s Top 50 ranking. Malvern Prep is one of 16 teams from across the country that will participate in this year’s USA Baseball National High School Invitational (NHSI) in Cary, N.C., March 29-April 1; it is the only team from Pennsylvania to receive an invite.
“We’ve known about that tournament for a long time and it’s obviously a very prestigious tournament,” Hilliard said. “We’ve had a lot of success both in-state and out-of-state (at Malvern Prep), but for us to actually get invited to it, it was quite an honor in that we’re really starting to kind of raise eyebrows on a bigger scale.
“It’s a testament to how well the kids have done through the years for us to be noticed and put on that kind stage with the idea that we can compete with some absolute powerhouse programs.”
Muntz is thrilled: “For me personally, that’s like the best thing that I can do my senior year,” he said. “It’s so awesome because we’re the only team from Pennsylvania to be in it (this year) and it’s an honor. … I think it’s going to help our confidence, honestly.
“The Northeast, we’ve got good players but sometimes we don’t get ranked that high and we have a little bit of a chip on our shoulders,” he said. “So, it gives us confidence to know that we’re out there with the best teams in the country.”
The Friars will head into the 2017 season with three goals that are – almost incredibly – reached more often than not: They want to win Inter-Academic League and PAISAA state championships and they also want to win 30 games, a high total for a season that usually runs about 35 games.
The top players, like Muntz, considered themselves “blessed” to be given the opportunity to attend Malvern Prep because he is surrounded by teammates and classmates who know those goals are lofty but are also willing to march the extra mile to make sure they are achieved.
They know they’re going to be challenged playing their 10-game Inter-Ac League schedule, they know they will face salty competition in the non-league portion of their schedule, and they know they’ll especially have to be playing at the top of their games when they stare-down many of the country’s best programs for a few days in North Carolina.
And that’s all right. Hilliard and his coaches will make sure that what the Friars know going into the season won’t get in the way of what they hope to accomplish by seasons’ end.
“We’re not going to not address the expectations,” Hilliard said. “It’s kind of like the elephant in the room. Everyone knows that we’ve been ranked, everyone knows this, that and the other thing; everyone knows the names that we have and the guys that are going (to college) here and there.
“At the same time, once we do address it, it’s more, ‘Hey, it’s just baseball’ and … we need to let the chips fall where they may.”